Announcement - Project: Ocarina

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

It's funny. Despite me saying otherwise, people kept thinking and saying I was going to continue on with recreating Ocarina of Time in Unity. I said there was a chance, but that was it. Well I'm happy to say now that, thanks to a few kind donators of Unity Pro trial keys, that's no longer the case. I will be continuing, and the project will be given a new official name! And that name is...

I wanted something in the name that immediately made you think of OoT. But I didn't want to give it a game name like "Zelda: The something of something_or_other". It's not a game. It's just a fun walk through the past! This codename style name also represents it well as it will be a open ended project. I have no goals with it except to add more to it as I can.

So, besides Kokiri Forest, what can we expect right now? Well, that's a bit open as well. I want to leave that up to you guys. Tell me what place you want the most from the game, and the most popular places are what I'll try to recreate! But I can at least tell you one place that's going to be added next.


The Temple of Time

I chose this one myself. For one it is a cool nostalgic place. But also because I wanted to test some things and it sounded easier than most places to re-create. It was in the ways I thought, but it brought some new challenges I didn't think of! At this time it isn't finished, but I made a lot of progress on it by casually working on it here and there. I should be able to finalize it and move onto somewhere else before the next demo I release. Maybe another place too...

In addition to that, something I want to focus on is getting an avatar body for the user. I mentioned in a previous post the challenges for me with that, but I'm driven to overcome those and add it!

Beyond that, I may go back to Kokiri Forest a little. For things like adding the missing particle, night time sounds, or something.

I should get this said now. Please, don't expect me to recreate the entire game. For one that steps on the toes of Big N a little to much. And for another, some areas were rendered in a quasi 2D/3D view from a fixed camera position, and don't translate as easily to 100% 3D. While I do have some interest in taking a shot at such areas, I'd rather work on places that are easier to get finished. And finally, this is learning material for me. I do hope to move onto my own custom projects at some point. I've already started the planning for one, and I would like to start prototyping it in a couple months!

I broke this news on Cris Miranda's podcast over on EnterVR. If you haven't already listened to it, you should do so now! I had a fun time doing it, and hopefully you will find it interesting and enjoyable to listen to as well!